Google has ramped up its war against shady online ads, booting over 5.1 billion advertisements from its platform in 2024 alone. The tech giant didn’t stop there. They restricted another 9.1 billion ads and suspended a staggering 39.2 million advertiser accounts globally. Talk about spring cleaning.

Google’s crackdown deleted 5.1 billion shady ads, restricted 9.1 billion more, and axed 39.2 million advertiser accounts. Serious spring cleaning.

This crackdown represents a massive 200% increase from 2023’s figures, when only 12.7 million accounts faced suspension. In India alone, 2.9 million advertiser accounts got the boot. Most of these bad actors never even got their first ad served. Google‘s playing whack-a-mole with scammers before they can scam.

Publishers weren’t immune either. The company blocked or restricted ads on over 1.3 billion publisher pages, primarily for content violations involving sexual, violent, or harmful material. They took broader site-level action against 220,000 publisher websites. According to search marketing expert Barry Schwartz, this represents an unprecedented level of enforcement. Apparently, some folks still haven’t figured out that Google has standards.

Behind this enforcement surge is Google’s AI arsenal, including their Gemini LLMs. They launched over 50 AI enhancements in 2024 alone, helping spot emerging scam tactics like deepfakes and financial schemes. The machines are getting smarter while the scammers… not so much.

Financial scams received special attention, with 415 million scam-related ads removed. Google suspended over 5 million accounts for serious policy breaches related to these schemes. They even assembled a specialized 100+ expert team to tackle deepfakes and public figure impersonation, resulting in a 90% drop in such reports. The need for such strict enforcement highlights why policy monitoring is essential for advertisers looking to maintain compliance and avoid suspension.

The company didn’t just play defense. They added or updated more than 30 advertiser and publisher policies in 2024, including the “Limited Ads Serving” policy that restricts reach for unfamiliar advertisers. Their Misrepresentation policy got an upgrade specifically to combat AI-generated scams.

For all the techies wondering: over 90% of publisher page enforcement now relies on machine learning. The robots are taking over ad safety, and honestly, they’re doing a pretty decent job.